What size memory card do you need

If you own a digital camera, or if you are thinking about purchasing a digital camera, one of the questions that you are probably wondering about is what size memory card you are going to need to buy.This is an important question whose answer depends on the types of photos that you are taking, how many photos you plan on taking, and your style of photography.

Essentially all digital cameras now come with at least a little bit of memory.Most digital cameras come with a memory card along with the camera itself; however, these memory cards are most often quite small and don't have a very large storage capacity or a high speed.For example, I recently purchased a mid-range digital camera, turned it on, and discovered that the memory card included with the camera can hold a grand total of...35 photos.That's not going to take me very far.

When you are looking at the different sizes of memory cards that are available for purchase, you need to carefully ask yourself how many photos you will be taking.While you can simply buy the largest memory card that you can find, if you aren't going to realistically be taking that many photos in one photography outing, you don't need that size of memory card.It's easy to simply upload your photos in between uses of your digital camera.On the other hand, if you tend to take a lot of pictures before returning to your computer, then you will need a much larger memory card so that you aren't caught without any memory.

So here are some questions that you need to ask yourself and that you need to think about when you are deciding what size of memory card you need.

What are my photography habits?
How will you be using your card?What exactly do you expect from your memory card?What characteristics do you want from your memory card?

How much storage does your camera require for each image?
Knowing how large each image file is on your camera can help you determine how large a memory card you will need.Different cameras have different sizes of image.The size of the image data file depends on the megapixel size of your camera's image sensor.The more megapixels there are, the larger the file is going to be.

You also need to look at what type of format your files will be saved in. While the majority of digital cameras will automatically save your photos to JPEG format, which compresses the size of the image, you can also purchase cameras like Canon Digital Rebel XT that can save images as either RAW format images or TIFF format images.These formats will preserve the quality of your image, but they will take up more space.This means that you will need a larger capacity memory card.

What size of photo prints will you be looking at?
If you are happy with only having 5 x 7 inch prints, or 4 x 6, then you won't need as high a resolution of photo.This means that your image quality will not be as high, but also that the size of the data file will not be as large.You can fit more images on your memory card.

On the other hand, if you will be printing larger photos, such as 8 x 10 inches, then you will need to save your images with a higher resolution and without compressing them, if possible.This will require a larger memory card.

How often will you be uploading your photos onto your computer?

The more often you upload your photos to your computer to edit them and to organize them, then you won't need as large a memory card as someone who seldom updates his or her photo albums on their computer.